How to Navigate the New Twitter.com
Twitter has undergone some recent changes. This is a guide to navigating your way around the basic features of this social media website and to gain an understanding of the functions. Once logged in you will find yourself on the home page. This article will explore the home page and the functions of all the tool bars.
The Home Page
Here you will find the main stream of tweets from the people you are following. Depending on how many people you are following depends on the frequency of updates. This now appears to the left of your screen. When there are new tweets a message will appear; click on this and the new tweets will appear.
Tweet functions
If you see a message you would like to respond to you need to hover your cursor over the message. When you do this three options will appear – favourite, reply and retweet.
· Favourite – Twitter can be a fast moving mass of messages and at times difficult to keep up with. The favourite option makes this easier by allowing you to earmark any messages you deem important or useful. If you click on favourite a gold star should appear and it will be saved under favourites. Rather than searching for it you can now go back and look at this information when you click on favourites.
· Reply - when you click on reply it will bring up a small popup menu with @ and the username of the person. It will also include the usernames of any others included in the tweet. If you only want to reply to the individual just delete these usernames and type your message. This saves you typing out usernames and the potential of incorrect spellings.
· Retweet - The retweet function can be used to share information and is an effective advertising tool. If someone you follow shares some useful information you can retweet this message thus sharing the information with all your followers.
When you hover over a message you will also see a small arrow at the top right hand corner of the tweet. If you click on this it will bring up a details pane giving you some information about all of the people included in the tweet.
You can now also bring up a mini profile rather than navigating away from your page. If you click on a username it will bring the mini profile up on the right. This brings up their details, their last three tweets and the option to view their full profile.
Top tool bar
Along the tool bar at the top of your screen you will find several functions.
· Search – Enter the keyword you want to look up and once you have pressed search it will bring up search results for you. The search will bring up four different search options (Tweets, tweets with links, tweets near you and people.) Click on what applies most depending on who or what you are looking for. There is also an option to save the search. Do this when it is a search you will want to come back to on a regular basis.
· Home – click on this to bring yourself back to your home page
· Profile – if you click on this it will bring up your profile page as it will appear to others. It is important to remember that this can be viewed by anyone else on twitter so be careful when it comes to careless remarks!
· Messages - Click on here to view your direct messages. To prevent spam direct messages can only come from people you already follow. To send a direct message click on new message and a popup box will appear. Start typing the recipient’s name in the top box and a list should appear and you can select who you are sending the message to.
· New tweet – There is a small box with a blue mark next to your username. Click on this if you want to send a new tweet. A popup box will appear for you to write your text in. You can do this from any page.
· Username drop down menu – The drop down menu brings up three options: Settings, Help and most importantly Sign Out. Click on sign out to log off of twitter. It is important to make sure you log off twitter before shutting down your computer.
Functions tool bar
This is the tool bar you will find by your timeline. It includes all of the following.
· Timeline – This is where you will find the updates of all the people you follow.
· @Mentions – Next to timeline you will find this tab. Click on this to bring up any twitter messages directed at you. This means even if there have been hundreds of updates you will not have missed any messages meant for you. This is why it is important to format messages correctly so they will be seen by the intended recipient.
· Retweets – When you click on this tab it will give you three different options to look at. The first is retweets by others and will show all the retweets carried out by people you follow. The second is retweets by you and shows the items you have retweeted. The third and probably the most useful is your tweets, retweeted. This will show if anyone has decided to retweet your message to their followers. In cases where this has been done it is often worth taking the time to thank the person for retweeting.
· Searches – If you have saved any searches (see how above) they will appear as a list here. If you click on any of your search options it will bring the search list up.
· Lists – It is possible to list the people you follow into different categories making it easier to locate their tweets. If you have any lists saved you will be able to bring them up here. This is also where you can start to create lists.
The right side bar
· Your tweets – clicking on this will again bring you back to your profile as others will see it.
· Following – Click on this to bring up a list of all the people you are following. Here you will be able to manage that list.
· Followers – Click on here to see who is following you.
· Favourites – Click on here to view any tweets you have marked as favourites. This is handy when you see useful information in tweets you wish to look at again later.
· Listed – Click on here to see who has listed you and under what category. If you have been listed inappropriately it is possible to block the user.
· Trends – These show the trends being discussed on twitter. You can have this set as worldwide trends or switch to the United Kingdom or other countries.
· Who to follow – This is a suggestion list of people you may like to follow. They will generally be people with similar interests and it is worth using when you start out to locate like-minded people.
It is worth taking time to familiarise yourself with the functions of twitter. It is a powerful tool for communication and is widely used for marketing. It may be daunting at first but becomes easier the more you use it. Being able to effectively twitter may open up a whole new world to you or in business a whole new market.
This content was provided by one of our users, katylittlelady
